---
title: "Fashion plate"
description: "A fashion plate is a printed illustration showing the latest styles of dress, issued in magazines and albums from the late eighteenth century."
type: Glossary
url: https://teazle.art/glossary/fashion-plate
published: 2026-10-14
updated: 2026-10-14
author: "The Teazle editors"
---

# Fashion plate

*A fashion plate is a printed illustration showing the latest styles of dress, issued in magazines and albums from the late eighteenth century.*

Fashion plates showed current clothes on idealised figures, usually etched or engraved and coloured by hand, and later printed in colour. They spread Paris and London styles to readers and dressmakers far away. *Gallery of Fashion*, published in London from 1794, is an early example.


## Sources

1. [Fashion plate (AAT 300311781)](http://vocab.getty.edu/page/aat/300311781). Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus
2. [Gallery of Fashion, vol. I](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/837922). The Metropolitan Museum of Art
3. [Fashion plate (Q5436787)](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5436787). Wikidata

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